


buffy the vampire drabbles

by marginalia



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Community: open_on_sunday, Community: sunday100, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Other, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-03-30
Updated: 2003-03-30
Packaged: 2018-10-11 02:24:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 2,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10452849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marginalia/pseuds/marginalia
Summary: 25 btvs drabbles & variations in chronological order. All standalones. Anything multipart or crossover is uploaded as its own thing. Written 2003-2005. One may hope they get better as you go along.





	1. Ears - Jonathan/Andrew

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sunday100, bleeding in an alley.

Jonathan stood in the alley outside the Bronze, whimpering softly, his forehead pressed against the cool brick. "I don't get why the Dingoes are so popular," he muttered to Andrew who had followed him out. "They make my ears bleed."

"Literally," said Andrew, pulling a napkin from his pocket and gently wiping away the droplets that had trickled down Jonathan's jawline.

"Hellmouth," Jonathan shrugged, looking at his shoes. Not looking at Andrew. Definitely not shivering at the warm breath on his cheek.

Andrew nodded, pocketed the soiled napkin, and took Jonathan's hand. "Let's get you home before something smells it."


	2. Her Dark Secrets - Willow/Tara

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sunday100 movie challenge.

hearing willow at the door, tara grabbed the remote, switched off the tv, and pretended to flip through a magazine. she looked up, feigning innocence as willow entered. "how was your day?"

"good, anya got in this great new book at the magic box," willow replied, distracted. "did i hear voices in here a minute ago?"

"v-voices? nope, no voices."

"are you sure?"

"maybe me, talking to myself?" tara offered.

willow stepped across the room and pushed the "open" button on the still-running dvd player. "not again, honey." tara looked at her feet. "not the _elf_."

"no!" tara laughed. "hobbitses!"


	3. Future Echoes - Giles

He should have done something. He shouldn't have stopped her, no, but he ought to have provided guidance. Formed her gift. Taught her boundaries, even as Buffy was teaching him to stretch beyond his own. Watching Willow grow, he only allowed himself to see the student. He flinched away from the witch.

In the end, he ran away, escaped the children who relied on him. Children they were still, despite their history, requiring direction and firmness to mold their strengths. Frightened children they were when he returned, flung open the door, and saw himself, Ripper, rage untamed in Willow's eyes.


	4. Refract and Contract - Tara/Spike

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sunday100

The mirror hung above her dresser, framing the tiny room with snapshots of her mother. Tara returned to it habitually, teasing her image like a sore tooth. She looked hard at the photos and the reflection, but she saw only a jumble of images - family and history - never resolving into one vision. One Tara.

Until him. Until his eyes drew hers up from the floor, piercing her with a gaze that shivered down her spine and pooled warm in her belly. "There, pet." She felt his arms around her waist but saw only herself in the mirror. Whole.


	5. True Love - April

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sunday100

A soft whirr broke the silence of the dorm room as April came out of recharging mode and looked methodically among the clutter and shadows.

"Warren?" she asked brightly. "Has anyone seen my boyfriend?" she inquired of the silence. But there was no answer. She frowned slightly, stood, and examined the items on the desk. She fingered his roommate's car keys, but Warren had never uploaded driving instructions.

April scrolled through her telephone file, picked up the receiver, and dialed. "I need to find my boyfriend. Could you send a taxi?" she asked the dispatcher. "Please hurry. It's true love."


	6. Cinco de Mayo - Jonathan/Andrew

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sunday100, Holiday.

The plan had been to limit themselves to salsa and chips, maybe a soda or two. They were on the lam and on a budget, after all.

That was the plan. But plans, even when carried out by two thirds of a much feared super-villain trio, go oft awry. And so it was, many margaritas later, that the sun pierced the darkness of their room. Jonathan woke to a splitting headache, but with Andrew - still asleep and wearing a much battered purple sombrero - holding him snug. He blushed and thought Cinco de Mayo might have been worth it.


	7. Maiden Conduct - Tara/Spike

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sunday100 firsts.

Tara walks blindly through the streets. Once she knew better than to leave herself vulnerable in the Sunnydale night, but the dorm room was so close and stuffy. _Odd_ , she thinks, detached. It should feel empty. Instead the walls closed in and she fled.

Tara walks, and it seems inevitable that he finds her, that he presses his cool lips to her forehead and guides her gently back as she fixates on small details - the arm strong around her waist. The chipped polish on his fingernails as he opens the door. The first time a boy walked her home.


	8. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc - Xander/Anya

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reverse Buffy Tribute Challenge

It happened because it was meant to happen. Any other argument would be a logical fallacy. "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc", Anya would have said, enunciating each word carefully, prompting him to wonder just how much she had learned in her thousand years on earth.

And then to realize how little he knew her.

He didn't leave because of the old man, because of what he had shown, the darkness of their future. He had known already. History repeats itself if you're not looking out for it, but Xander Harris had finally opened his eyes.

He would have left anyway.


	9. He shall, from time to time - Tara/Oz

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reverse Buffy tribute challenge.

She had a stillness about her, a sharp contrast to Willow in his mind. It drew him to her, slowly, but inextricably. But she wasn't quiet, not when you knew her; she had a laugh that filled the room. And such strength, an energy that balanced and anchored him. Her hands cool on his body, calming the wolf-heat. Her voice soft, chanting the cycles of moon and earth.

But that was then. Now, from time to time, he returns to her beyond the gloaming, rests his forehead against the stone, and breathes deep and slow as she centers him again.


	10. The Monsoons of Sumatra - Troika

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sunday100

Warren stared glumly out the window. It was a rare rainy day in Sunnydale, the damp and grey seeping into the basement and their bones.

"Like the monsoons of Sumatra," he intoned dramatically, scuffing his trainers along the carpet and collapsing on the couch.

"Remember that summer in Sumatra?" Jonathan contributed.

Warren smiled. "I was never in Sumatra." He stretched out on the couch, folding his hands behind his head. "I'm going to marry the first woman I meet who understands that. VCR Clue. Brilliant."

Andrew felt his cheeks flush, and turned away. "I knew it," he thought. "I did."


	11. Off-Season Transactions - Faith/Tara

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sunday100, McSweeney's List Challenge.

Tara must get away, away from this too small town where every place she goes and everything she sees is a memory. And memories cannot be trusted.

She goes to the coast, finds a cheap room, and walks the beach, grey with threatened storm.

Faith finds her fragmented as the idea of the sun slips below her horizon. Faith leaves words of apology behind, carries her back to the near empty motel, and coaxes heat and flow back into Tara's body and mind.

Tara wakes to Faith guarding against nightmares real and imagined. Spring is no longer so far away.


	12. Library Science Jargon That Sounds Dirty - Giles/Oz

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sunday100 McSweeney's List challenge.

Giles walls himself in, day by day, one dusty book at a time. He traces spines with the tips of his fingers, centers himself with texture and scent while eyes drift closed behind uncharacteristically smudged glasses.

Eyes closing, and behind them flickers the face of the boy caged downstairs, flickers his face, flickers his hands pushing away jacket, unbuttoning vest and shirt, callused fingers running up his chest. Oz, lifting the glasses to safety, lifting himself, wrapped strong around Giles, kisses with furious tongue and teeth, rocking pale skin and sweat and eyes full of practiced heat.

_Memories. Restricted Section._


	13. The Piano Has Been Drinking - Giles/Oz

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sunday100 song titles.

Words are slipping away, slipping around him, slipping in and out of other languages, losing him before translation and finding him after.

He signs to the bartender for another, because if he tries to talk he'll ask for cigarettes for the telephone and he knows that doesn't make sense no matter how much the piano has been drinking.

He signals for another, then curls his fingers around the empty glass, caressing it with his thumb. The barstool burns cold and his world is empty.

He can't find Daniel with a Geiger counter and the piano has been drinking.

Not him.


	14. Perfect - Tara/Oz

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sunday100 song title.

The universe unfolds in its own time, so Oz doesn't hurry across plains, over mountains, through canyons. He holds her face, a snapshot in his mind, and follows the sun west to her.

And it's perfect.

Darkness explodes before them, people flee, vampires hunt. She tugs him close by the waistband of his jeans and he tastes power on her lips.

It's perfect.

The earth consumes sun and moon, light and dark. He sings past the crackle of the radio and she adds high harmony. Their song, for now. Under the stars she curls around him, calming the wolf.


	15. California Stars - Tara/Spike

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sunday100 song title. "California Stars" -- Woody Guthrie, Wilco.

He's been everywhere, and the stars are always cold, except in California. In California, when he's far enough from the cities to see them, they burn, flickering pin pricks of heat.

They're fire and danger and so is she, burning distant, burning for Red, now burning for him. She warms him now, cradles his heavy head, his weary bones against her all curves. She rocks him soft and slow in her heat, sings low and secret the stories of the stars, sings his troubles away.

They lay back beneath the sky, the blanket of stars, heady on fire like wine.


	16. Distance as you breathe - Tara/Spike

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sunday100

He hates how they abandon people. How they let people slip away, while spinning on in their selfish little worlds as though nothing has changed.

He watches her now, sometimes, when she forgets how to watch out for herself. Some nights she catches him and they sit for a while in silence on the steps of the residence hall.

He wants to reach out across the distance, touch her hand and draw on her warmth. Remind her that she's beautiful, let her speak low and musical.

He wants to reach out. But pain and fear and Willow crowd between them.


	17. First Impressions - Oz, Tara

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Open_on_Sunday.

First was Willow, spices on her skin, then fear, bitter and biting. Finally, Tara herself, like rich, dark earth. But the wolf never waited that long. "Run," he had snarled at her, as it tore through his body.

He had filed away that day, locked the memory for years until the wounds around it healed into scars. Only then did he carefully peel back the layers and revisit the traces that remained.

She's long gone, folded into the ground with reverence, ground that cracked and collapsed, souls screaming up to the powers. He is haunted by the smell of earth.


	18. Til I Break - Giles/Oz

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Open_on_Sunday

He stands in the center of the floor, warm wood smooth beneath bare feet (chipped polish and long toes). His hands are crossed at the (too thin) wrists, held at the small of his back. Bordered, not bound, he clings to the edge. He is well trained.

The room is humming, song and nerves, and he ducks his head and closes his eyes as his world twines in on itself. He thinks it's pretty much time, yeah, and he shifts slightly, slim hips slipping in low slung slacks. He is rewarded, soft yet firm, voice like honey: "Still yourself, boy."


	19. In Retrospect - Andrew

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Open_on_Sunday

He had been busy in the spring. Maybe that was why he forgot. Saving the world was a lot of work, even when you have help, and when people were dying right now it was hard to remember people who died before.

In November, though, when he wore suits in England, warding off the chill of a fall so different from Sunnydale, then there was time to remember Jonathan.

Alone in his dark flat, listening to the Imperial March, regret, fear and sorrow twisted through him again, stomach and heart. Andrew raised a glass to the second super-villain to fall.


	20. Northern Lad - Giles/Oz

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Open_on_Sunday, Tori Amos titles.

He never really had Oz. You couldn't hold a boy like that, couldn't keep him forever, liquid silver sinking to his knees, tasting you secret and salt. You could experience him for a while, kisses wet in the rain, shivering like music. But he'd never really be yours.

"I'm going now", Oz said. They were as far west as you could get, though, so Oz went far to the east and back. Postcards from Canada, _if you could see me now_ , slow molasses tucked between the lines.

Giles slipped the cards into a book and turned the page.


	21. Icicle - Tara

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Open_on_Sunday, Tori Amos titles.

She says she's sick. It's true more or less. Her mother's gone, the warmth is gone, and the house is all chill and icicles and she thinks there must be a way to melt them away. She says she's sick, and they go to pray to a god who has nothing to do with her. She's a Dark Creature. She's not in His book.

She lays down, reaches down, fingers down, curling fingers in curls, curling fingers in soft damp girl skin, Sunday dress bunched around her hips. She opens slowly, petals opening, icicles melting water running.

And she flies.


	22. Binary - Andrew/bot!Andrew

This Andrew scrolls through files, _flick flick flick_ past maps, past Doctor Who trivia, past memories of Warren, real and fabricated. Memories when all went right.

That Andrew goes dizzy with possibility. This Andrew blinks. This Andrew licks his lips. That Andrew wonders if this Andrew is exactly the same. If he's allergic to soybeans. If he has that mole. If he wants to be touched _there_ and if that will make him forget the things he doesn't really remember.

When this Andrew touches that Andrew, for a moment he wonders how Warren knew. And then he forgets Warren altogether.


	23. Lamentation - Tara/Oz

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drabble-and-a-half for 15minuteficlets

_and she's gone_

he knows the moment it happens, knows it for sure, the rich scent of her on the air around him turning to dust and ash. he knows it even before the world changes, before everything goes oily and dark with the strength of willow's grieving. though he is far away he thinks for a moment that he could stop her, that he could calm the witch as he tamed the wolf. 

but it is only for a moment.

the shadows spin and make him dizzy, and he curls in on himself, waiting to see the fate of the world. he is not ready to fight for a world without her in it. he keeps the wolf close.

when the sun rises again, he does not know how long it has been. he is stiff with nightmares. he stretches, warm in the morning light, and sings her farewell.


	24. Untitled - Tara/Oz

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buffyverse drabblethon.

When he says, "Tara, do you really think this is a good idea?" she thinks she's never heard him say so many words at once. She knows Willow never said so few. Caution is a rare thing she must capture once found.

The question has cost him, admitting the fear, and this realization calms her. She is grounded in the tone of his voice when he speaks her name, the solid manner in which he watches her, waiting. His fingers are laced tight around the mug, and when she tugs one hand free he relaxes, allows her, and answers himself.


	25. Kathleen - Tara, Oz

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song inspired drabbles. "Kathleen", Josh Ritter.

It's been too few days since Tara left the Summers house and she doesn't fit in this party. She's trying with the smile that has yet to make it to her eyes, but her arms are still a cross of protection Oz can see from the makeshift stage. Swaying a dream in her swirling skirt she stays through the first set and he doesn't know why.

He thinks he'll go to her at the break and offer her a ride. She'll say yes and he'll take her home, and in the quiet of their conversation neither will think of Willow.


End file.
